Page 24 - OHS, July/August 2024

IH: CHEMICAL SAFETY
sales (and increased production) needed to cover those costs. Also, it can assist managers in quantifying the benefits of reducing or elimi- nating hazards when implementing a pneumatic conveying system.
One of the most effective methods to justify costs of ergonomic improvements is through production enhancements. Just shaving seconds from a single process can have a huge impact. An example from ASSE’s website, ROI of Ergonomic Improvements: Demon- strating Value to the Business, validates how shaving 3.2 seconds from a task can reduce direct labor costs by $29,000 per year.
Fall Hazards
It is not unusual for organizations to seek out pneumatic conveying solutions for the express purpose of eradicating ergonomic hazards. A common dilemma in the industrial world is the manual transport of materials to raised platforms where ingredients are dumped into hoppers. This action represents not only ergonomic hazards, but also a fall hazard. Although the majority of organizations seeking to eliminate this type of hazard have yet to experience a fall event, pro- active executives seek out automated solutions to safeguard workers.
When increased demand turned up the notch on production for a particular product, a chemical manufacturer’s primary goal was to eradicate an ergonomic issue by removing the need for workers to dump 20-40 drums containing powder chemicals, that weighed up to 225 pounds each, from a raised platform. Although the company hadn’t had any injuries with that process, its policy was to wipe out any potential.
Although the job required a single operator, the organization staffed it with two people to reduce the potential for injuries. Ini- tially, the company tried a bucket elevator. That method, however, created a lot of dust in the air and still presented an over-exertion hazard when dumping the product into the elevator. The company also considered a hoist system, but that would have required op- erators to do some drum handling which would have made the process significantly slower than their existing method.
The size of the pneumatic conveying system depends upon the desired speed at which product is transferred from one place to an- other as well as the distance between two transfer points. Because the company wanted to eliminate an ergonomic issue and timing wasn’t an issue it chose to utilize a smaller conveying system.
To move several hundred pounds of material in 30 minutes, a Tube Hopper was utilized to transfer the claylike material up a level into a volumetric feeder. Another Tube Hopper was also added to a separate line that pulled granular material from awkward shaped drums weighing over 200 pounds each, up into a liquid mixing tank.
Although the time to transfer the products stayed relatively the same with the new units, the job went from requiring two people to a single operator and eliminated a hazard. The company wasn’t looking to cut any people, but they did save some money by it and the unit paid for itself in the first year of use.
Elevated falls are less frequent but more severe than same-level falls in the workplace. In 2011, falls, slips and trips claimed the lives of 666 workers and one in four resulted from a fall of less than 10 feet.
The manufacturing industry experienced 47 of the fall fatalities in 2011. OSHA’s SP worksheet, does not include cost data for fatali- ties, but a 2003 mean estimate of direct costs for a single fatality in the workplace was approximately $900,000.
Direct costs are budgeted costs, or insured costs. Indirect costs
are those that are not budgeted (not insured) and eat away at prof- its. Indirect costs are estimated to be anywhere from 2 to 20 times the direct cost. These costs include training replacement employ- ees, accident investigation and implementation of corrective mea- sures, lost productivity, fines and penalties, repairs, any other costs not covered by insurance, including loss of employee morale.
Fall fatalities demonstrate a worst-case scenario in the workplace and have a severe impact on employee morale, and high indirect costs that are conservative at one million dollars. Most commonly, falls, trips and slips result in back injury or some other musculoskel- etal disorder (MSD); however, statistically MSDs from those hazards are calculated separately. MSDs include any injury, damage or disor- der of the joints or other tissues in the upper/lower limbs or the back.
Back Injury
In the manufacturing arena, 4 out of 5 materials handling inju- ries affect the back and require a median of 10 days for workers to recuperate. Using the $afety Pays worksheet, calculating with a 5 percent profit margin, a strain has indirect costs in excess of $33,000 and requires an additional $672,122 in sales to recoup those costs. Anytime organizations can eliminate the possibility of back injuries, injury costs should be taken into consideration when determining ROI.
While working on a major efficiency project that culminated in the building of new rooms for a blending area, a tea manufacturer wanted to also cut down the amount of lifting that the operators were doing manually in the production department.
Previously, the operators were manually weighing individual hundred-pound batches into barrels, using forklifts to transfer them to the top level, and then dumping them into hoppers by hand.
One of the biggest concerns for the tea manufacturer was the breakdown of the materials themselves. Pneumatic conveying is a very gentle way to move product and once that was proven to the manufacturer in a testing facility; the system was designed to automate the process.
Now rather than operators using forklifts to bring barrels up to the mezzanine level, and manually scooping materials into the hopper, operators insert a wand into the barrels and product is pneumatically transferred from the wand to the blenders, elimi- nating all the forklift traffic and wear and tear of the workers’ backs.
In addition to eliminating ergonomic issues and potential costs associated with injury, the company had a 20 percent increase in productivity.
Fugitive Dust Control
Pneumatic conveying systems are fully enclosed, protecting materi- als from air, dirt and waste. Because product does not escape from a pneumatic conveying system, particulates that can endanger work- ers respiratory health or settle on equipment and surfaces posing an explosion hazard are prevented from entering the environment.
Any time a pneumatic conveying system is employed, costs as- sociated with housekeeping diminish as well as the potential for a dust explosion. Much could be written about combustible dust ex- plosions and the benefits of pneumatic conveying systems; however, it should be made clear that the cost of employing even the most sophisticated pneumatic conveying system would be far less than that of a dust explosion.
22 Occupational Health & Safety | JULY/AUGUST 2024
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